[open-science] Publication of In-Depth Content

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 12:49 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Important question, thanks. I have strong, possibly arbitrary views.
>
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 12:33 PM, Florian Meier <florian.meier at koalo.de>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>> it seems to me that it is quite challenging to publish in-depth
>> material. I came across this problem while trying to publish
>> mathematical content in an applied context (an analytical model for
>> wireless networks). Most conferences and journals (open or not) have
>> strict page limits
>
>
> Yes, unfortunately,
>
>>
>> for good reasons (e.g. concise presentation of the
>> content and preventing long gibberish).
>
>
> There are very few good reasons and many bad ones. If the material is being
> printed, *and* if any human actually reads the paper version, then this is a
> reason. But there are good reasons for trying to scrap it.
>
>>
>>
>> Though, this often leads to quite imprecise presentation of the
>> mathematical content, so that if you want to reproduce the results, it
>> might take weeks or months to work out the details, especially if you
>> are interested in proving the results. In my opinion this time is
>> superfluous, because this work was already done by someone, but not
>> published because of page limits.
>
>
> Bad publication means that 85% of science is wasted (The Lancet).
> Condensing the account is now an act of destroying science.
>
>>
>> What are your ideas? How should content be published so that it does not
>> bore readers in the first place, but allows for easy reproduction for
>> interested researches?
>>
>> Some thoughts from my side:
>> Often you can find some conference paper and an extended version at
>> arXiv or elsewhere, but many of these are more initial versions of a
>> paper with a few pages more than the final conference paper. So, though
>> they provide some more details, they are already written to be suitable
>> for submission (i.e. they leave out details and long proofs).
>
>
> There are differences between conferences and other publications, because
> conferences sometimes create actual paper. IMO there is no valid reason why
> the full account should not be available.
>
>>
>> Secondly, publishing an extended version of the same paper is difficult
>> with regard to copyrights, self-plagiarism
>
>
> I don't understand this "self-plagiarism" unless it is deliberately meant to
> increase your metrics.
>
>>
>> and last but not least
>> confusing the reader who reads nearly the same paper twice.
>
>
> If it's clearly signposted it shouldn't confuse anyone.
>
>
>>
>>
>> An alternative might be to publish a (short) paper with the ideas, a
>> brief summary of the mathematical content, related work and evaluation
>> at a conference and publishing the actual groundwork (and only the
>> groundwork) including all details elsewhere, preferably as open as
>> possible. What would be most suitable for this? arXiv?
>
>
> Yes.
>
>>
>> ResearchGate?
>
>
> Absolutely not - it's a walled garden without any Openness.
>
>>
>> Technical report at the library of the own university?
>
>
> Yes
>
>> Is this already a widespread approach?
>
>
> No
>
>>
>> Should it be used more widely?
>
>
> Yes

Forgive my ignorance, but how widely is this process used?

I could imagine a very useful system where it was standard procedure
for any given university library to host online technical reports in
perpetuity.

And, now I look, I discover for the first time that Berkeley (where I
have worked for about 8 years in total) does have such a system [1]
although it appears to be based in the electrical engineering /
computer science department.

Has there been any movement to standardize this?  It sounds very attractive.

Cheers,

Matthew

[1]  techreports.lib.berkeley.edu